Our Brand Is Crisis

An excellent documentary about the introduction of US-style data-driven image management into third-world election politics. This enabled the center right candidate, Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada, to defeat the centrist Manfred Reyes Villa and the left wing populist Evo Morales. This sowed the seeds of violent dissent and led to Goni's eventual resignation and the rise of Evo's revolutionary regime. The documentary is excellent, and there is a final shot of Evo, having learned he is now in power, looking out the window of his airplane, a stunned, worried look on his face. How prescient.

Very good DVD!!!!

This documentary traces the re-election campaign of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (Goni), which was largely run by paid, American political consultants. Their challenge: to get their candidate re-elected even though as president his highly unpopular free-market policies had done nothing to alleviate the extreme poverty and unemployment the country was facing, and even though he was perceived as an arrogant, elitist, fair-skinned, American-raised "gringo" who was out of touch with the poor, indigenous majority of Bolivia.Despite all these obstacles, we see how the consultants were able to use polls, focus groups, negative attack campaigns and advertisements to successfully market their candidate (Noam Chomsky always talks about how political campaigns are like selling toothpaste; here we see a perfect example). They also benefited from a political system in which a candidate could win with a plurality of the vote: the vote ended up being divided between three main candidates, allowing Goni to win with only 22% of the popular vote.However, as Goni continued to implement unpopular policies even after the election, the Bolivian people took to the streets en masse to demand his ouster. Goni fled to the U.S., where he now resides, while his vice president took over until the next election in which the indigenous, left-wing candidate Evo Morales came to power with an overwhelming majority of the vote.What I found most amazing was how little the paid, American political consultants knew about the policies that "their" candidate was implementing and how adversely they were affecting the people. Knowing that he was the "free-market" candidate (a supporter of the so-called "Washington consensus"), was enough to convince them to work for his re-election; and these are the people who represent the "left" in the U.S. (James Carville and the like). It was also shocking and disappointing to see how easily people are manipulated (i.e., Goni is not faring well in the polls so the political consultants run some ads discrediting his opponent and re-inventing Goni's image; the next focus groups and polls show that it has had the desired effect: people now like Goni better than his opponent). People always say they know political ads are bogus, but yet they clearly work each and every time. One questions the viability of "real democracy" when so many people are so easily manipulated.Personally I would have liked to see more information about the mass protests that ousted Goni and brought about the rise to power of Evo Morales. But, I suppose that would really be another documentary. Still, this one is worth watching.

This is a boring and useless documentary. It is really being pushed in the national media but there is nothing here to be learned. Do not waste your money or time.

The documentary of Bolivian policy is simply a contemporary situation that makes this video as a good sample of ongoing affair in many Latin American countries.

This is a film that is not subtitled and much of it's content is in Spanish. It's a interesting film, but unless you are bilingual I can't recommend spending $9.99.

Purchased for a faculty member and I received no complaints.

What a shocking image of how powerful political consultants can be when they decide to spread American democracy to other countries. Provocative film!